By George Hatza, Freelance Arts Writer
If you ever talk to someone involved in the dramatic arts, chances are they started performing, directing, or writing very early in their lives. It’s a gift – a way of seeing the world as well as a way of behaving.
It may take some time, years even, before it all connects in their minds. But from a young age, they have already joined the club, whether they are conscious of it or not.
So it was with director Kimberly Patterson and playwright Judd Lear Silverman, who are collaborating with Reading Theater Project on Silverman’s play, “Proud,” opening Nov. 7 at the WCR Center for the Arts, 140 N. Fifth St. in Reading. The play, juggling both momentous and comical elements, is based on a real event that occurred in May 2018 when a pride of peacocks escaped from the Philadelphia Zoo and caused three days of vehicular chaos on the Schuylkill Expressway.
“Most of my writing happens because I love strange news,” Silverman confided. “I came upon an item about these peacocks, and I saw a picture of them marching down the Schuylkill, surrounded by cars. Oddly enough, it looked to me like they had a mission. It tickled me. I wrote a play about it. I didn’t know what it was going to be, but I decided to write it from the perspective of the peacocks.
“I didn’t want it to be preachy. And I don’t set out to write either comedy or drama, but inevitably they both creep in. When you engage people’s imagination and sense of humor, you’re touching truth buttons.”
Patterson, who was born in West Lawn and now resides in Sinking Spring, is a high school English teacher in the Antietam School District. She graduated from Wilson High School, where her love of theater began to blossom. She then continued her studies at New York University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in dramatic literature, theater history, and the cinema.
She continued her education at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, earning a Master of Arts degree in a program that allows students to create their own course of study, such as independent performance, dramatic writing, or technical theater.
Finally, she attended Hollins University in Roanoke, Va., earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in playwriting. She returned to Berks County just as the pandemic was taking hold of the country in 2020 after teaching briefly in a private school in Florida.
Asked if “Proud” was a comedy or something darker in tone (one of its more profound themes touches subtly on the issue of climate change), Patterson responded: “One might think that a play about talking peacocks would be silly and outrageous. Granted, there is comedy in ‘Proud,’ but it’s really about art and beauty, the things that make us human.
“For the last 400 years, we’ve had Shakespeare giving us beauty. Hope must be possible if we can keep creating art in these horrible times. The underlying theme includes getting people in touch with who they are, as well as with other people. In a sense, finding that inherent human connection.”
Patterson’s approach to Silverman’s vision – a world in which anthropomorphic birds find their humor, leadership, intelligence, and courage – is connected to a book of essays by Susan Sontag, the legendary American author and critic whose collection of essays, “Notes on Camp” (1964), influenced Patterson’s thinking.
“There is a quote in that book that captures the essence of ‘Proud,’” she said. “And I believe it defines the play’s genre. Sontag writes: ‘The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relationship to “the serious.” One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.’
“That’s what I think Judd is doing with ‘Proud.’ You won’t see Big Bird in this play. I wanted to avoid the cartoonish, which didn’t seem right given the work’s clever, even significant ideas. One thing that kept coming back to me was the film ‘The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ (1994), the Australian picture about drag queens on a road trip that deals with some of the same issues as ‘Proud’: families, love, friendship – and fabulous costumes.
“Not that we’re equating this to drag. Not at all. But both are camp, in the Sontag sense: stylized, perhaps abstract. At once ‘frivolous’ and ‘serious.’”
Without giving too much away, even an element of tragedy permeates the piece. And the so-called “mission” that Silverman would have us believe drove the peacocks over the wall of the zoo adds underlying suspense to the play. What are the birds seeking? Why did they escape? What do they see that humans don’t see? Who do they need to tell – and why? Are they plotting a takeover? Or perhaps, are they saving humanity from itself? This all adds a sense of gravitas to “Proud” without undermining its humor – no easy feat.
Silverman, a native of New London, Conn., was reared in Willimantic, Conn. These days, he teaches at Pace University in New York City remotely from his home in Denver, Lancaster County, just over the Berks County line. He graduated from Brown University, having majored in theater and semiotics, a branch of linguistics that analyzes the meaning of signs and symbols in various cultures.
His interest in theater began in elementary school, continuing through high school. He later earned an internship for four seasons at the University of Connecticut’s summer theater.
After many years of working in New York City, living in Brooklyn, he moved with his partner to Lancaster County when the pandemic hit. However, he still maintains his Park Slope apartment (“Thank God for rent control,” he admitted, laughing).
The move to Pennsylvania came after living and working for almost 40 years in New York City, doing temporary jobs with people such as Broadway impresario Alexander Cohen and agent Flora Roberts (Stephen Sondheim’s agent). He also interned at the Circle Repertory Company during the golden years of acclaimed playwright Lanford Wilson (“5th of July,” “Talley’s Folly,” “Burn This”) and director Marshall W. Mason. In the 1990s, he started teaching and managed to squeeze in the founding of a theater company.
At that point, he decided to get his Master of Fine Arts degree in directing at Brooklyn College.
Just as Patterson managed to discover what she perceives as the defining motif of “Proud” – which Silverman describes as “The Dirty Dozen” as played by peacocks – the playwright said pretty much the same thing about the production’s point of view.
“If you’re writing about the human condition (even if the main characters are peacocks), you’re writing about the side-by-side coexistence of laughter and tears,” he said. “Truth is somewhere between the two.”
When teaching his students at Pace, Silverman lists the four ingredients necessary for a piece of theater: “Character. Action. Setting. Event. Those elements are what you need to write a play.”
“Proud” has all four, plus the bold imaginations of both the playwright and the director, in addition to live music composed by Chris Heslop and performed by four musicians, a choreographer, an audacious costume designer (Mak Sherrid), a set created by Patterson and Silverman, and a diverse cast of eight (playing four peacocks and four humans) that has thrilled all involved.
Any director or playwright will tell you that myriad discoveries are made along the journey from auditions to opening night – things that can change an artist’s thinking about the process or lead him or her in different directions.
“If you set up what you believe to be the rules, and then get surprised,” Silverman said, “then the audience gets surprised.”
Thus, it always is with the finest theater.
“Proud” runs Nov. 7 and 8 at 7:30 p.m., and Nov. 9 at 2 p.m., continuing Nov. 14 and 15 at 7:30 p.m., with a final performance at 2 p.m. on Nov. 16. The running time is 85 minutes. Ticket information is available on the RTP website at readingtheaterproject.org. The cost for a standard general-admission ticket is $25. Other options include Pay It Forward for $50, in which you purchase your own seat plus one for someone who can’t afford to buy one, as well as the Pay What You Will selection, in which you purchase a ticket at a price you can afford.
This season’s theme is “Embracing Our Humanity.” For more information, call 484-706-9719.
George Hatza is the former Entertainment Editor of the Reading Eagle. He is retired and living in Exeter Township.
The post Four Peacocks Conspire in Reading Theater Project’s ‘Proud’ appeared first on BCTV.
Source: bctv
Be First to Comment